Fresh off the back of the worldwide release of their new original soundtrack release ‘Days of the Bagnold Summer’, Belle and Sebastian were invited to perform a live session for Mary Anne Hobbs at BBC 6 Music yesterday.
The band contributed a live version of their uptempo recent single ‘Sister Buddha‘, along with a rendition of ‘I Know Where The Summer Goes‘, before chatting with Mary Anne about the new record and their adolescent penchants for Megadeth and Anthrax.
How do you follow up one of the most critically acclaimed debut albums of all-time? Well, if you were Liz Phair — facing intense scrutiny from friends & foes alike — you put your head down and persevere with a collection of songs that resulted in her first (and only) Rolling Stone cover (and Matador’s first ban from Spin Magazine). But it was all a huge misunderstanding! FUN TRIVIA : at least one retailer objected to the couplet, “Your kisses are as wicked as an F-16 And you fuck like a volcano, and you’re everything to me”. I misheard the lyric, thought it was “M-16”, pointed out the hypocrisy of said establishment peddling RIFLES to children but drawing a line at consensual sex between adults. Bottom line — they no longer sell any of our products but that’s ok because who wants to buy records at Bass Pro Shop? No one ever said Revisionist history was going to be pretty.
This month marks 25 years since the release of Liz Phair’s sophomore LP Whip-Smart. To commemorate the anniversary Phair’s expansive box set Girly Sound to Guyville will be available for 25% off standard list price through September 19th at the Matador webstore worldwide.
01. Sister Buddha (Intro)
02. I Know Where The Summer Goes
03. Did The Day Go Just Like You Wanted?
04. Jill Pole
05. I’ll Keep It Inside
06. Safety Valve
07. The Colour’s Gonna Run
08. Another Day, Another Night
09. Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying
10. Wait And See What The Day Holds
11. Sister Buddha
12. This Letter
13. We Were Never Glorious
Perfume Genius has released ‘Eye in the Wall’, a new track taken from
The Sun Still Burns Here, a dance and music performance collaboration with Seattle-based choreographer Kate Wallich. The evening-long piece, set to debut in October, is co-directed by Perfume Genius and Wallich and stars Perfume Genius’s Mike Hadreas alongside dance company The YC.
The nearly 9-minute ‘Eye in the Wall’ is a hypnotic swirl of propulsive percussion, celestial atmospherics and a spellbinding vocal performance that is unlike anything Hadreas has done before. Listen to it HERE.
“I think of ‘Eye in the Wall’ as a cosmic peep show,” says Hadreas. “Watching, being watched, dancers unlatched from the Matrix and truly LIVING. Creating new rituals on the other side. Whole bodies braiding, spit glowing in the dark and a camera floating just above. We spent a lot of time in the studio alternating between the math of the song and the magic of it — which was very much like the process of creating the dance itself. Working with Kate Wallich and YC, really being with my body, really being with other bodies – there is control and a real formula but a portal opened up in parallel that is completely free and overwhelmingly full of feeling.”
Wallich adds: “’Eye in the Wall’ is the part of the piece where we lure you in and spit you out. A tornado of body, time, space, transformation and deterioration. It’s like pulling the Death card when you already knew what needed to end.”
(photo by Andrew J.S.)
For nearly a year, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas and Alan Wyffels have been rehearsing with Wallich and The YC in Seattle. Not only are Hadreas and Wyffels fully integrated into the complex choreography of the piece, but the performance will also feature Hadreas performing songs he has composed for the project live, creating an exciting marriage between Perfume Genius’ epic take on popular music and the evocative nature of Wallich’s contemporary dance.
A trailer for The Sun Still Burns Here, featuring a clip of ‘Eye in the Wall’, can be viewed above. The trailer was directed by Zia Anger, with art direction by Andrew J.S.
The world premiere of The Sun Still Burns Here will be held on October 4th and 5th at Seattle’s Moore Theatre, with more performances slated for New York, Minneapolis and Boston through the winter. The full list of dates can be found below.
On Tuesday, Spoon’s cover of John Lennon’s “Isolation” was performed for Sirius/XM’s Howard Stern Show. “Rent I Pay” from the same session can be viewed via the Sirius/XM app.
In honor of The Boss’s birthday, Lucy Dacus has released a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark,” which can be heard HERE. This is the fourth installment of her 2019 holiday song series, following her Valentine’s Day cover of “La Vie En Rose,” and original songs “My Mother & I” and “Forever Half Mast,” celebrating Mother’s Day and Independence Day, respectively. Lucy’s ongoing 2019 singles series will also include tracks tied to Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s, with a physical EP coming in the fall.
In “Dancing In the Dark,” Lucy pays tribute to one of her role models with an inspired Bruce Springsteen cover that foregrounds her ebullient guitar playing. She swaps out the synth line of the original tune in favor of uptempo strumming patterns that coalesce with her arresting vocals to reinvigorate an American classic. “Happy birthday to Bruce,” says Dacus, “but also happy birthday to my dad, the biggest Bruce fan I know and the reason I’ve listened to The Boss since birth. I resisted it when I was younger as a rebellion to my dad’s taste, but I have come to love his music on my own time. His lyricism is embedded in my own songwriting inextricably at this point.”
Kim Gordon’s debut solo album, No Home Record, is out a month from today. After releasing the first single and video from that album, “Sketch Artist” last month, Kim Gordon is back with the new track and visual “Air BnB.”
In commemoration of the 10 year anniversary of Yo La Tengo’s Popular Songs, the 2xLP/CD will be 25% off at the Matador Webstore worldwide through September 12th.
(Yo La Tengo, 2009, photographed by Steve Gullick)
Someone at the label had the brilliant idea to rent a Tribeca theatre for a press + VIP “listening party”* for this sprawltastic masterpiece and in retrospect, it’s not much of a party without snacks or drinks. To clarify, label staff had snacks and drinks, we just neglected to serve any to the guests.
Anyhow, I thought the playback was going swimmingly, the depth of ‘Popular Songs’ being met with rapt attention until the room’s collective meditation was interrupted by (NAME RHYMES WITH DEAN OF AMERICAN ROCK CRITICS) snoring.
Fuck it, launch parties are for NASA. If this isn’t Yo La Tengo’s best album it’s firmly in their top 4 (I know it’s a cliche to say, “fight me”, but I’ve studied Muhammad Ali’s patented “rope-a-dope” strategy and I’m pretty confident I can persevere simply by letting you strike me repeatedly until you’re too tired to move)
(* – other than the snoring episode, the other highlight of the afternoon was product manager Todd Netter opining, “you have to admit, John Sterling is a really good announcer.” This observation was entirely unrelated to Todd bringing his tool box of talents to another record company)
Spoon today shine a light on the rarity track “Shake It Off.” Available digitally for the first time ever, and culled from a 2002 split single with Swearing With Motorists (Super Asbestos), the track was recently made the b-side of the 7” version of latest single “No Bullets Spent”
Ahead of the release of their original soundtrack Days of the Bagnold Summer, out next Friday September 13th, Belle and Sebastian have premiered a new song from the album today, “This Letter.” The second single from this album, the new track follows July’s release of “Sister Buddha.”
Yo La Tengo continue their (nearly) annual series of Hanukkah shows for selected charities this December at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, December 22-29, with tickets on sale this Friday (September 6) at noon eastern. No-fee tickets will also be available at the Mercury Lounge box office at noon ($50, cash only).
(Guided By Voices circa 2004. Photo: Jeremy Balderson)
Back in print for the first time in over 10 years, Guided By Voices’ limited red vinyl reissue of Half Smiles of the Decomposed is available today.
“At the time of it’s 2004 release, ‘Half Smiles Of The Decomposed’ was meant to be Guided By Voices’ final album. As it turns out, Bob Pollard’s a better revisionist historian than the rest of us combined — it merely turned out to be the pause button being pressed on that particular incarnation of GBV, though given Doug Gillard’s contribution, one could argue this one sits pretty neatly alongside much of the 2010’s output. People will tell you “Girls Of Wild Strawberries” was the hit and since I’m not inclined to look up old CMJ charts (wasn’t very inclined in 2004, either) we can either presume that’s accurate or simply skip ahead to “Closets Of Henry”, which somehow didn’t make the greatest hits, ‘Human Amusements At Hourly Rates’ (sticklers for detail will claim that’s because the comp. came out in 2003, but just to put the subject to bed, let’s just say it was record company negligence).
After this, it would be another 8 years for a Guided By Voices studio album (and there were three of ‘em in 2012, OF COURSE).”
Just a reminder that today marks the release date for the LP and CD versions of our reissue of Snail Mail’s 2016 EP ‘Habit’, also featuring a cover of Lois Maffeo’s “The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl In The World” as a bonus track. Order/stream here.
ALGIERS have released a collaborative audiovisual piece, “Can the Sub_Bass Speak?”, a new work from the band and production duo Randall Dunn and Ben Greenberg. The new piece pits charged language and free jazz collage by ALGIERS multi-instrumentalist Franklin James Fisher, saxophonics pioneer Skerik and drummer D’Vonne Lewis against a maelstrom of visuals by award-winning filmmaker Sam Campbell and typographer Farbod Kokabi.
Inspired by a chance encounter with artists Moor Mother and Harrga at Wysing Polyphonic in 2018, “Can the Sub_Bass Speak?” contorts ALGIERS’ post-punk deconstruction of racial and class sonic politics into new collaborative directions. “Can the Sub_Bass Speak?” is the centerpiece of a larger web installation thereisnoyear
.
The film recalls the ‘visual abstraction’ and political radicalism of Lis Rhodes and John Akomfrah, situating Fisher’s lyrical examination of structural racism within the disorienting resurgence of fascism across Europe and the United States.
Fisher writes :
“Who has the cultural authority to designate origin and authenticity? ’Can the Sub_Bass Speak?’ is a frustrated regurgitation; a re-contextualization; a re-appropriation; a shield and a mirror that projects back onto the world a lifetime of interpellating language rooted in weaponized ignorance and supremacist privilege. The improvised punctuation is provided by Skerik on the tenor saxophone and D’Vonne Lewis on drums and percussion. The underlying cacophony traces the evolution of African-American music, experience and identity. This is not for the mercenary architects: the Jacks and Queens of simulated experience. This is for anyone who has found themselves on the sharp end of insidious, rhetorical prying: ‘Where are you from?’ ‘What are you?’ This is for anyone who has had their identity assigned and determined by the agents of patriarchy. This is for the Subaltern.”
In addition, ALGIERS have announced UK & European headline tour dates for 2020, Kicking off in Brighton on February 3rd, the band headline London’s Village Underground on February 5th, before continuing to further stops in the UK and Europe. Tickets for the 2020 shows go on sale Friday, August 30th, at 10am. A full list of current and upcoming dates can be found below.
Algiers On Tour, New 2020 Dates in Bold On Sale Friday at 9am GMT
Wednesday, August 28 Acquaviva, Montepulciano IT
Thursday, August 29 AMA Festival 2019, Bassano IT
Saturday, September 14 Soundsnoise Festival 2019, Dornbirn AT
Tuesday, September 17 Lido, Berlin DE
Friday, September 20 Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg DE
Friday, September 27 Street Mode Festival 2019, Thessaloniki GR
Sunday, September 29 Route 66, Ioannina GR Monday, February 3 The Haunt, Brighton UK
Wednesday, February 5 Village Underground, London UK
Thursday, February 6 YES, Manchester UK
Friday, February 7 Stereo, Glasgow UK
Saturday, February 8 Whelans, Dublin IE
Monday, February 10 Brudenell, Leeds UK
Wednesday, February 12 Botanique Rotonde, Brussels BE
Friday, February 14 Club Volta, Cologne DE
Saturday, February 15 Manufaktur, Schorndorf DE
Monday, February 17 Zoom, Frankfurt DE
Tuesday, February 18 Beatpol, Dresden DE
Thursday, February 20 Hybrydy, Warsaw PO
Friday, February 21 Lucerna Music Bar, Prague CZ
Saturday, February 22 Flex, Vienna AU
Monday, February 24 Strom, Munich DE
Wednesday, February 26 Monk, Rome IT
Thursday, February 27 Ohibo, Milan IT
Saturday, February 29 La 3 Razzmatazz, Barcelona ES
Sunday, March 1 Cafe Berlin, Madrid ES
Tuesday, March 3 Rock School Barbey, Bordeaux FR
Wednesday, March 4 Stereolux, Nantes FR
Thursday, March 5 La Maroquinerie, Paris FR
Earlier this summer, Belle and Sebastian performed their 1996 classic If You’re Feeling Sinister in full for the first time in North America at Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. Pitchfork has premiered two videos from that set today, “Me and the Major” and “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying.”
Belle and Sebastian release their original soundtrack for the film Days of the Bagnold Summer in just two weeks. A link to pre-order the record and hear the lead single “Sister Buddha” is available HERE.
Multi-disciplinary artist Kim Gordon‘s first solo album, No Home Record is being released worldwide October 11th on Matador Records. No Home Record follows the recent opening of Gordon’s solo exhibition “She Bites Her Tender Mind” at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in Dublin and “Lo-Fi Glamour” at Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. Among its nine tracks, No Home Record features the new single “Sketch Artist” accompanied by a video directed by Berlin-based experimental artist Loretta Fahrenholz and includes a cameo from actress and writer Abbi Jacobson. Fahrenholz notes, notes ‘Sketch Artist’ is a haunted car ride. Kim drives as ‘Unter’ Pool summons passengers throughout nighttime LA. The city drifts by, passengers intermingle in the back seat and Kim’s deadly stare shocks pedestrians along her route.”
No Home Record was produced largely by Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Ariel Pink, Sky Ferreira) at Sphere Ranch in Los Angeles, along with contributions from Shawn Everett (Jim James, The War on Drugs) and composer/filmmaker Jake Meginsky (L’appel Du Vide, ‘Milford Graves Full Mantis’). Gordon’s solo debut album’s title is a nod to the French-Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s film No Home Movie .
‘Why a solo record? And why now?,’” Gordon mused of the upcoming solo debut. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have happened without the persistence of Justin Raisen. Living in LA the last few years it feels like home, but the transience of the place makes it feel sometimes like no home.”
Since co-founding Sonic Youth in 1981, Kim Gordon has remained at the nexus of music, fashion, art and (more recently) books and film. In the past few years alone, Gordon has debuted in the #1 spot on the NY Times Bestseller List with her 2015 memoir Girl In A Band, acted alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Jonah Hill under the direction of Gus Van Sant (in 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot”), released music and performed as one half of Body/Head alongside Bill Nace, and opened multiple solo-exhibitions at internationally renowned museums.
‘No Home Record’ will be available on standard black vinyl, limited edition white vinyl, CD, or cassette. Get 15% off your order when you bundle the record with a tee (featuring stills from the “Sketch Artist” video directed by Loretta Fahrenholz) or album art tote.
With a career spanning nearly four decades, Kim Gordon is one of the most prolific and visionary artists working today. A co-founder of the legendary Sonic Youth, Gordon has performed all over the world, collaborating with many of music’s most exciting figures including Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Julie Cafritz and Stephen Malkmus. Most recently, Gordon has been hitting the road with Body/Head, her spellbinding partnership with artist and musician Bill Nace. Despite the exhaustive nature of her résumé, the most reliable aspect of Gordon’s music may be its resistance to formula. Songs discover themselves as they unspool, each one performing a test of the medium’s possibilities and limits. Her command is astonishing, but Gordon’s artistic curiosity remains the guiding force behind her music. Gordon continues this pursuit on No Home Record, her first-ever solo release, produced by Justin Raisen (Angel Olsen, Yves Tumor, John Cale, Charli XCX, etc.) and recorded at Sphere Ranch in Los Angeles. Borrowing its name from a Chantal Akerman film, No Home Record is, in many ways, a return as much as it is a departure. When Gordon first began playing music in the early 1980s, she used a guitar, a drum machine, and some lyrics sniped from magazine advertisement copy. No Home Recordcontains echoes of that setup, in both form and concept. On “Cookie Butter” (produced by Shawn Everett), Gordon’s vocals jut out insistently over a tinny raindrop beat: “You fucked / You think / I want / You fell.” The song continues, hectic and driving, until finding resolution in the lines “Industrial metal supplies / Cookie butter,” perfectly illustrating Gordon’s singular lyric capacity to meld cultural critique, divulgence and humor. This captivating ability is further exemplified by “Don’t Play it Back” (produced by Jake Meginsky) where Gordon’s wiry vocals slice the track’s circling electric floor: “You don’t own me / Golden Vanity / You can pee in the ocean / It’s Free.” This nod—with a wink—towards culture’s increasingly fraught (and increasingly commodified) relationship with identity and the self is one of No Home Record’s central themes. “Shopping off a cliff / You’re a breath on my eye / To lose a compass of teeth / Hash away at twitter,” Gordon recites, phosphorescent and dirge-like, on the album’s stunning closer “Get Yr Life Back Yoga,” “Everyday, everyday, everyday / I feel bad for you / I feel bad for me.” It makes sense that this “American idea” (as Gordon says on the agitated rock track “Air BnB”) of purchasing utopia permeates the record, as no place is this phenomenon more apparent than Los Angeles, where Gordon was born and recently returned to after several lifetimes on the east coast. It was a move precipitated by a number of seismic shifts in her personal life and undoubtedly plays a role in No Home Record’s fascination with transience. The album opens with the restless “Sketch Artist,” where Gordon sings about “dreaming in a tent” as the music shutters and skips like scenery through a car window. “Even Earthquake,” perhaps the record’s most straightforward track embodies this mood; Gordon’s voice wavering like watercolor: “If I could cry and shake for you / I’d lay awake for you / I got sand in my heart for you,” guitar strokes blending into one another as they bleed out across an unstable page. Front to back, No Home Record is an expert operation in the uncanny. You don’t simply listen to Gordon’s music; you experience it. – Elaine Kahn
Two clips from Snail Mail’s recent performance at Pitchfork Music Festival have been posted on the publication’s YouTube channel, “Pristine” and “Speaking Terms,” both from the 2018 breakout Lush.
In case you missed it, Snail Mail’s debut EP Habit will be remastered and reissued with an additional track, the Lois Maffeo-penned “The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl In The World.” The EP is available for PRE-ORDER now, and available online and at your local record store on August 30th.
Snail Mail continues her endless world tour in the western half of the U.S. this week. Tickets for all dates listed below are available now.
Split singles are usually the byproduct of shotgun marriages and/or sleazy cash grabs by labels eager to exploit even most the tenuous connections between two entirely unrelated artists. BUT ENOUGH ABOUT OUR JICKS/LA GUNS single!
For entirely different reasons we’re not getting more records from the late Jay Reatard or the splitsvile-population-them Sonic Youth and it would be the height of exaggeration to claim this 2009 curio is a highlight of either’s vast discography. But that’s what Matador Revisionist History is all about, exaggerating heights! Primo Carnera might’ve been 6′ 5 1/2 inches tall in reality, but look the fuck out for 7-foot tall Primo Canera appeals to the PT Barnum, PT Cruiser and PT Anderson in us in equal measures.
Also, maybe you slept on a chance to buy it the first time.
(All profits from this release will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital)
Coinciding with the reissue of the 7″, to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of Jay Reatard’s Watch Me Fall, take 25% off the LP on the Matador webstore worldwide through August 8th. All orders of the album will receive a Matador Revisionist History slip mat while supplies last.
Steve Gunn returns to New Zealand for 6 solo shows this November preceded by his Japanese debut at Tokyo’s Shibuya 7th Floor on November 3rd. Ticket links can be found below.
Thursday, August 1st WTMD First Thursday, Baltimore, MD
Friday, August 2 Johnny Brenda’s Philadelphia PA +
Saturday, August 3 The Bell House Outpost at Industry City, Brooklyn NY ^
Saturday, August 17th Sole East Resort, Montauk, NY
Saturday, August 24 Merleyn, Nijmegen NL
Sunday, August 25 Cabaret Vert Festival, Charleville Mezieres FR
Monday, August 26 Patterns, Brighton UK
Tuesday, August 27 Bodega, Nottingham UK
Wednesday, August 28 Stereo, Glasgow UK
Thursday, August 29 Exchange, Bristol UK
Friday, August 30 End of the Road, Dorset UK
Saturday, August 31 OLT, Antwerp BE *
Sunday, September 1 Sidecar, Barcelona ES
Monday, September 2 Kafe Antzokia, Bilbao ES
Tuesday, September 3 Sala 0, Madrid ES
Wednesday, September 4 ZDB, Lisbon PT
Friday, September 6 Zonnehuis, Amsterdam NL
Saturday, September 7 Misty Fields, Asten-Heusden NL
Sunday, September 8 Brotfabrik, Frankfurt DE
Monday, September 9 Bumann & Sohn, Köln DE
Tuesday, September 10 Lido, Berlin DE
Wednesday, September 11 Trafo, DE
Thursday, September 12 Druckluft, Oberhausen DE
Friday, September 13 Helling, Utrecht NL
Saturday, September 14 Leffingeleuren, Leffing BE
Monday, September 16 Lost Lane, Dublin IE %
Tuesday, September 17 Omeara, London UK %
Thursday, September 19 Kuudes Linja, Helsinki FI %
Monday, September 23 Salon, Istanbul TR % Friday, October 18 Lambert’s, Austin TX %
Sunday, October 20 Duet Jazz (The Bob Dylan Center Presents: An Evening with Steve Gunn, Tulsa OK Wednesday, October 23 Showbox Theater, Seattle WA @%
Thursday, October 24 Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver BC @%
Friday, October 25 Wild Buffalo, Bellingham WA @%
Saturday, October 26 Wonder Ballroom, Portland OR @%
Monday, October 28 Slim’s, San Francisco CA @%
Tuesday, October 29 Slim’s, San Francisco CA @%
Wednesday, October 30 Slim’s, San Francisco CA @% Sunday, November 3 Shibuya 7th Floor Tokyo JP % Wednesday, November 6 Tuning Fork, Auckland NZ % Thursday, November 7 Blue Smoke, Christchurch NZ % Friday, November 8 Dog With Two Tails, Dunedin NZ % Saturday, November 9 The Plant, Blenheim NZ % Sunday, November 10 Moon, Wellington NZ % Wednesday, November 13 Sitting Room Session, Hawkes Bay NZ %
+ w/ Nace-Truscinski Duo
^ w/ Hand Habits
* w/ John Prine
% indicates solo performance
@ w/ Dinosaur Jr.
‘Everything Hits At Once : The Best Of Spoon’ — featuring the new single, “No Bullets Spent” — is out today. LP and CD editions are now shipping from the Matador and Spoon webstores ; The album will be available at most independent record stores on August 2, and everywhere by August 16. Contact your local store for details.
Prior to Spoon’s show tonight at Austin’s 360 Ampitheater, the band will be signing copies of ‘Everything Hits At Once’ and the “No Bullets Spent” 7″ at Waterloo Records at 1pm.
